(You will be notified by email so please supply one on the comment form.) Deadline is Wednesday, June 27, 2012.Like the other Neatos, the XV-21 is a rather noisy little machine, so you'll definitely want to try and use it while you're out of the house. A winner will be randomly chosen from all our clever robot-naming entries. Want to win your own Neato XV-21? Tell us in the comments what you would name your own vacuum. I may draw some eyes on our vacuum so I don’t feel quite so silly reminding him it to stop going under the couch.
Maybe a robot-run future won't be all that bleak. I know the dander and pet hair has been substantially reduced around here. One of my super responsible kids isn’t really keeping up with that dusting.īut I'm a convert. One of my kids pointed out that our house looks like we're expecting company. The sinks get wiped out more often, the couch blankets put away, the library books tucked back in the trunk, well, you get the idea. It's like the vacuum has set an example for us to follow. Because the floors are cleaner, it motivates us to do better elsewhere. And here's the most wonderful side effect of all. They clean their bedrooms so the robot has a reason to visit (it's screen politely asking to be put down as they carry it upstairs). They regularly straighten up to remove obstacles that might clog our suction-happy friend, keeping the floors freer of backpacks and magazines and other messes than ever before. When it gets stuck under our couch they cheerfully pull it out. Yet we've noticed some amazing, totally unexpected Neato XV-21 side effects.
Neato xv21 review plus#
We have a big family tracking in who knows what from the barn, plus three dogs and all sorts of visitors. This is quite an accomplishment for a machine that's about the size of two college textbooks. In other words, our floors are demonstrably cleaner. But following instructions, we ran it every few days (far more often than humans vacuum around here) and sure enough, the dust bin had less debris. The first time it had to be emptied twice before recharging. The contents of that dust bin are a potent reminder of how useful a Neato XV-21 can be. It displays polite prompts on its screen like "please put me down on the floor" when picked up and asks nicely when its dust bin needs to be emptied. It pauses in a considerate sort of way when a moving object, human or pet, passes by. (Except the vacuum is actually useful.) The vacuum easily fits under furniture that even super responsible kids don’t move when they do chores. When first turning on it powers up, surveys its surroundings, then gets to work with the sort of friendly purposefulness our Pomeranian thinks he exhibits. Also, the little thing has become a "him." I will try to pretend I still call Locutus "it" for the purposes of this review but this is harder than you might imagine.įrom the first time we first ran the Neato XV-21 we were impressed. No, the humans here insisted it have a name. But we couldn't just call it a robot or XV-21.